KAHA Coffee Roasters at the North East Coffee Festival

KAHA Coffee was honored to be invited to host a cupping workshop and serve three of our unique coffees at the North East Coffee Festival (NECF) in Concord, NH. Coffee professionals and enthusiasts from all over the North East descended upon Concord, NH for a two day festival on May 2nd & 3rd.

Attendees included coffee farmers, traders, importers, roasters, café owners, baristas, and home coffee enthusiasts. It was amazing to meet so many people as passionate about coffee as ourselves and have them all in one place!

Festivities included food & coffee vendors, live music, games, educational workshops to explore cupping of various coffees, sensory sharpening, roasting theory, a latte art throwdown, welcoming party, and a panel of coffee professionals sharing their stories and experiences with a younger generation of aspiring coffee professionals!

As coffee roasters, we spend a lot of time testing and tasting coffees to decide which new coffees to offer, for quality control, and for the purpose of creating blends to get the best characteristics from one coffee and blend it with desirable characteristics from other coffees to create a coffee masterpiece. The industry standard for tasting coffees is called cupping. Cupping involves a specific set of protocols which are used to narrow variables down to the basics so that coffees can be tasted in a more objective way across the board.

We were invited to host a cupping workshop and we chose to make it as easily accessible as possible for beginners through industry professionals. The theme we chose was "Exploring Roast Levels." With this theme, we were able to share our philosophy in how we approach roast levels for specific coffees to get the very best from a particular coffee whether that be bright acidity and fruity or floral notes in a light roast, or vibrancy, complexity and balance in a medium roast, or richness, depth, and heavy body in a dark roast.

For the cupping, we chose three of our most distinctly different coffees including our direct trade Ecuador origin coffee from our direct trade partner at Siempre Verde Farms at a light roast, our Colombia Huila origin coffee (Happy Medium) for our medium roast, and a Guatemala Blue Ayarza (used in our New England Blend) to represent our dark roast level.

We were blown away at the feedback we received during and after the cupping! The feedback we received was that our cupping workshop was one of the best workshops of the festival which absolutely blew us away! We received incredibly positive feedback on each of our roast level samples in how attendees of our workshop could taste the differences in areas such as acidity, body, complexity, balance, richness, and the wide variety in taste between the three roast level samples. We also received positive feedback in how the workshop was conducted by Martin Granda of KAHA Coffee Roasters and Siempre Verde Farms as he added in tidbits of obscure knowledge, fun questions, and led the workshop in such a fun and casual way which made it very accessible to all, even those with no prior cupping experience.

KAHA Coffee Roasters was also able to serve examples of the roast level samples as brewed coffee for attendees with our Ecuador Ingapamba Light Roast, Happy Medium Blend, and New England Blend. This was amazing for us to be able to showcase three of our most distinct coffees to coffee lovers of every experience level. The feedback we received from the brewed coffee was amazing from one person saying that this was the first time ever that a coffee's tasting notes were spot on and that they could actually taste the notes on the label, to others being taken with how good all three coffees were at each roast level. We also received incredible feedback at our display and full lineup of coffees!

The best part of our trip to NECF was the people we met and the relationships that were forged. We met so many wonderful people and it was incredible to see the passion everyone has for coffee! We can't wait to participate in more coffee festivals and events, especially on the local scene!